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Olympic swimmer Natalie Coughlin took to winning like a duck takes to water. She began swimming at just ten months old and has since won 11 Olympic medals, one in every event she's entered, leaving the 2004 Athens Olympics and the 2008 Beijing Olympics as the most-decorated female athlete. In Beijing, she became the first U.S. female athlete to win six medals in one Olympics, as well as the first female to swim the 100-meter backstroke in under a minute.

This year, the 29-year-old will be swimming in the 4x100-meter freestyle relay and compete for her 12th medal, which would tie her with Jenny Thompson and Dara Torres as the most-decorated U.S. female swimmer in history. You can see the results from her race here.

As you can imagine, she's used to having her photo taken, but Coughlin also loves to be behind the camera. She recently photographed a friend's wedding and, naturally, enjoys snapping underwater shots.

We caught Coughlin right before she left for the Games to find out what cameras and tech she'll be carrying with her on the road to London.

PCMag: What's the most exciting thing about going to the Olympics? How do you think it'll be different from previous Olympic Games you've competed in?Natalie Coughlin: Since this is my third Olympic Games, this will be much different from the previous two. In Athens I was a rookie; in Beijing, I was experienced; and in London, I'll definitely be considered a veteran.

PCMag: What's your favorite sport to watch or play, other than swimming?NC: I absolutely love watching beach volleyball and track. I played volleyball when I was in middle school and fantasize that if I wasn't a swimmer, I'd be a volleyball player. (I'm definitely more skilled in the water than on land!) And track is the most similar to swimming because there is a clear winner determined by time. There's no debating who did what.

PCMag: What's in your bag when you travel? What technology do you carry?NC: I always have my Apple iPad 2 16GB loaded with magazines (Food & Wine, Martha Stewart Living), TV shows, and movies. When we're on the road for competition, there's a lot of down time that needs to be filled with entertainment. The two cameras that I travel with are the Canon EOS 7D and the Canon PowerShot G7. I recently started shooting photos with my iPhone 4S and Photojojo's fisheye and macro/wide-angle iPhone lenses.

Meredith Popolo joined the staff shortly after graduating from snowy Syracuse University, where she earned degrees in magazine journalism and entrepreneurship. So far, the highlight of her PCMag career has been covering the Mars Curiosity rover landing from NASA's JPL in Pasadena, California. When she's not writing about tech, tweeting about Syracuse basketball, or hunting Foursquare mayorships around New York, she's likely—wait, never mind, that's basically all she does.
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